Why is my flash drive generating .lnk files? How did my flash drive become write protected when I never put that setting?

Question

I'm honestly not sure what went wrong with my flash drive. My flash drive doesn't store any of the actual files that I save. Instead, it stores the .lnk files. Now when I use a computer at a local library, it won't let me open it because it's a shortcut. What do I do? Not just that, but my flash drive won't let me do any changes because it somehow became write protected. I now can't flush my flash drive. What do I do? HELP!